Antoneta Roussi and Hannah Roberts report:
Nothing about the sand-colored façade of the palazzo tucked behind Milan’s Duomo cathedral suggested that inside it a team of computer engineers were building a database to gather private and damaging information about Italy’s political elite — and use it to try to control them.
The platform, called Beyond, pulled together hundreds of thousands of records from state databases — including flagged financial transactions and criminal investigations — to create detailed profiles on politicians, business leaders and other prominent figures.
Police wiretaps recorded someone they identified as Samuele Calamucci, allegedly the technical mastermind of the group, boasting that the dossiers gave them the power to “screw over all of Italy.”
The operation collapsed in fall 2024, when a two-year investigation culminated in the arrests of four people, with a further 60 questioned.
Read more at Politico EU.